Clarendon House Publications

04/12/2025

NEW RELEASE FROM CLARENDON HOUSE PUBLICATIONS!
THE GENETIAN
by Tobias Green with Alexander Marshall
https://www.clarendonhousebooks.com/alexander-marshall
‘Genet, the worldsphere known as Emerald, is categorised as a winterworld…’

First in Tobias Green’s renowned Saga of the Inner Worlds.

Humble beekeeper Veren Vantra, living a quiet life alone on the island of Garth on the seas of a half-frozen world, discovers in his cellars a creature unlike anything he has seen before…

Thadassy of the Lonely Isle, daughter of the slain Thagar, is sent to find the Key to Emerald by none other than Saraptar the Celestial…

Forced into a dangerous journey across storm-tossed oceans, pursued by firedemons and unearthly monsters, Veren and his companions discover wondrous artefacts left by the legendary First Ones, voyage to the sacred sanctuary of Asdalashan on Tingular Island and then far beyond…

What are the secrets of the mysterious Inner Zone?

Why has the fabled Citadel of the North remained hidden deep in the Great Ice for centuries?

And, while the machinations of the War Lord overturn the world and everything that ordinary Genetians think they know, it falls to Veren to solve the riddle of the Golden Worm…

For lovers of fiction like that of Ursula K. Le Guin, or the Icelandic Sagas, or J. R. R. Tolkien, or mediaeval epics.

Grab your paperback or Kindle version here:
https://www.clarendonhousebooks.com/alexander-marshall

By the way, this marks the SEVENTH book published by Alexander Marshall in 2025! What are the others, I hear you ask?
Epic Fantasy The Phantom Sword of Rondar
Superhero Dramas The Return of Captain Invincible, Spectrebrood and The Hand of Psion
Children's Tale Winter's Door (with Bernard Crispin)
and Western Adventure The Shattered Stone

all available in paperback or Kindle format here:
https://www.clarendonhousebooks.com/alexander-marshall

04/12/2025

The wild, desolate Yorkshire Moors, a landscape of solitude and stillness where one can easily become overwhelmed with vastness, form a starting point for understanding the poems of Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes, both of whom wrote a poem named ‘Wuthering Heights’. The marriage of two world-famous poets is not a common occurrence in history. Both Hughes and Plath have garnered a certain respect and admiration otherwise not distributed to them as single geniuses because of this. Comparing their viewpoints of the same landscape is thus doubly fascinating…

The wild, desolate Yorkshire Moors, a landscape of solitude and stillness where one can easily become overwhelmed with vastness, form a starting point for understanding the poems of Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes, both of whom wrote a poem named ‘Wuthering Heights’. The marriage of two world-famous...

03/12/2025

I thought I should put in writing some things about internet marketing which are based on direct experience.

It’s useful to parallel internet marketing with what might be called traditional marketing, or even running a shop on a high street. If you consider your book or your product placed on a website to be similar to a shop on a street, you can see how to better employ some basic marketing approaches…

I thought I should put in writing some things about internet marketing which are based on direct experience. It’s useful to parallel internet marketing with what might be called traditional marketing, or even running a shop on a high street. If you consider your book or your product placed on a we...

02/12/2025

If you’re a writer who has investigated writing techniques, especially to do with writing longer stories, then you have probably heard of the concept of the ‘Hero’s Journey’. It’s a widely recognised and used template for stories which involve a hero going on an ‘adventure’. In this model, there is a climax and the hero wins a victory, and then comes home changed in some way.

What’s wrong with this model?

If you’re a writer who has investigated writing techniques, especially to do with writing longer stories, then you have probably heard of the concept of the ‘Hero’s Journey’. It’s a widely recognised and used template for stories which involve a hero going on an ‘adventure’. In this mo...

01/12/2025

Here’s a classic pattern that most stories follow…

Here’s a classic pattern that most stories follow: A protagonist, usually a young boy or servant, is missing at least one parent and is being brought up by a close family member or social superior. Early in the tale, he encounters an old man with a stick who orientates him to the antagonist, openi...

29/11/2025

NEW RELEASE FROM CLARENDON HOUSE PUBLICATIONS!
Galaxy # 25: An Inner Circle Writers' Group Science Fiction and Fantasy Anthology
https://www.clarendonhousebooks.com/anthologies

Phantom duplicates in space, haunted prison ships, immortal beings in mystical cities, escape from underground suppression, compassionate robots, humanity viewed from the outside, dystopian near-futures, the consequences of the absence of pain, animals taking revenge, asteroid collisions and strange civilisations - it’s all here in Galaxy # 25!

Galaxy # 25 features the work of Raphael Merriman, the Birch Twins, Jayant Neogy, Jim Bates, RLM Cooper, Tim Law, Linda Sparks, DJ Elton, Tony Fyler, David Painter, Puneet Kumar, Allan Edward Tierney, A. L. Paradiso, Gabriella Balcom, Michal Reiben, Gareth Macready and Debby Hackbarth.

Grab your paperback or Kindle version here:
https://www.clarendonhousebooks.com/anthologies

29/11/2025

Do you think that authors push readers through their stories? Or pull them?

You probably have not thought about your progress through a story in these terms at all. For readers, the sensation is that they themselves are in control of whether they read or not. A reader picks up a book, reads a page or more, then puts it down - everything is reader-controlled, surely?

Except that it isn’t…

Do you think that authors push readers through their stories? Or pull them? You probably have not thought about your progress through a story in these terms at all. For readers, the sensation is that they themselves are in control of whether they read or not. A reader picks up a book, reads a page o...

28/11/2025

Your weekly newsletter is here!
https://www.clarendonhousebooks.com/single-post/your-weekly-newsletter-is-here-163

28/11/2025

I’ve written in earlier articles about the power that is at work in stories which both attracts readers and keeps them glued to the page or screen or stage. If a story lacks this power in any degree, a story fails to that exact amount; but add even a small part of one of the components of that power and attention is caught, engagement occurs, forward motion begins. The only works of fiction that survive for any length of time are those which contain a high enough amount of this mysterious power to get completed by the writer and to attract enough readers for them to be published, sold, admired, re-read and then to be in demand for future generations.

In brief - and it’s very brief, there’s much more to it, some of which we will examine in a moment - what you’re looking at in any piece of successful fiction is a set of questions which continually recur on a page or in a chapter or scene…

I’ve written in earlier articles about the power that is at work in stories which both attracts readers and keeps them glued to the page or screen or stage. If a story lacks this power in any degree, a story fails to that exact amount; but add even a small part of one of the components of that pow...

27/11/2025

Of course we already know what a ‘protagonist’ is, don’t we? And an antagonist. They are the ‘good guys’ and ‘bad guys’ of fiction.

Whether they appear on stage or in films or between the pages of novels, protagonists and antagonists are pretty universal. In some stories they are obvious - the hero wears a white hat, the villain a black one - and the story is a ‘shoot-out’ of one kind or another between them. In other stories, the distinction is less clear: in a tragedy, for example, the main thrust of the story is often how a potential protagonist turns bad and is doomed by a series of wrong decisions…

Of course we already know what a ‘protagonist’ is, don’t we? And an antagonist. They are the ‘good guys’ and ‘bad guys’ of fiction. Whether they appear on stage or in films or between the pages of novels, protagonists and antagonists are pretty universal. In some stories they are obvio...

26/11/2025

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26/11/2025

You have a few images come into your head.

With them, are some emotions or passions, connected to the images in ways that you don’t quite understand.

The combination is intoxicating, powerful enough to move you into a writing chair (sometimes) and to get you to try to capture what’s going on in your head as much as you can.

After a relatively short while, even if you feel confident enough with the language to get something down on the page or screen, you run out of energy: the original images have either vanished, or been morphed by your words into something else. If you’re lucky, this process has produced a fairly lengthy piece of writing. Perhaps you have developed momentum which means that you feel you can now complete a first draft of a novel; perhaps the original images and their associated feelings return to you from time to time, enough for you to sustain more and more pages of writing.

What you have managed to get out of your head and to paint in the form of words, though, more often than not is a disappointment on several levels…

You have a few images come into your head. With them, are some emotions or passions, connected to the images in ways that you don’t quite understand. The combination is intoxicating, powerful enough to move you into a writing chair (sometimes) and to get you to try to capture what’s going on in ...